An Iranian actress who won the best newcomer award at the Venice film festival has come under severe attack from the country’s authorities and state media after highlighting the plight of women in Iran in her acceptance speech. Laleh Marzban last Saturday won the best actress award in the Orizzonti sidebar competition for emerging talent, for her role in Mohsen Gharaei’s Falling House, a film revolving around three generations of women who are incarcerated in their own home by the family’s father. At the awards gala, Marzban dedicated her prize to “the women of my country who have paid the highest price for even the smallest measure of freedom”.
Speaking in Farsi, she added that Iranians were experiencing some of the most difficult days of their lives but should not lose hope. On Thursday, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a conservative-dominated government body appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, issued a statement condemning Marzban’s speech as “presenting a one-sided narrative of Iran’s proud society”. Referring only to “recent statements and behaviour made at the Venice film festival”, it said reducing Iranian women to “the stereotypes desired by western circles […] is not in line with the awareness-raising mission and social commitment of art”.
The statement has come on the back of a raft of similarly worded attacks in state-affiliated Iranian media, some of which called for the actress to be disciplined by the regime. Zahra Chekhmaghi, a journalist and presenter associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), called Marzban “a two-faced person, […] self-interested, hypocritical, despicable and miserable”, while another IRIB-affiliated media personality, actress Zhila Sadeghi, criticised Marzban for not dedicating her speech instead to the children killed in a US missile strike on an elementary school in Minab on 28 February. On state TV IRIB, a Qu’ran expert said the actress had been “deceived by the enemy” and called on the government to not let her work in Iran.
Another news agency, Student News Network (SNN), urged the ministry of culture to not let Marzban back into the country. The Iranian reaction to Gharaei’s film and Marzban’s speech appears to mirror the pushback against another film that premiered on the Lido this year, Guardian-produced documentary NAZA, about Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week he would seek new laws allowing Israel to strip citizenship from people who “smear” Israeli soldiers, escalating a campaign against NAZA’s directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
Gharaei’s Falling House thematises the collapse of traditional patriarchal family structures in Iran, and men’s efforts to keep them in place by force. Marzban plays twentysomething Ensi, who announces to her family her plans to leave the country and pursue a modelling career in Turkey. In a desperate effort to assert his authority, her father Rashid (Farhad Aslani) locks Ensi and the other female members of the household in their rooms.
Asked after Falling House’s Venice premiere how the film would be received in Iran, Marzban said: “This question is very important for me as an actress, and as all other women in Iran, whether they be doctors, artists, whatever profession women can perform, we can only make one step at the time, one step towards our objective,” she said. I have given my contribution. I really hope many other people can make small steps towards our common objective.”
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